What is a website and why is it considered as business essential in today’s digital age? A website is the virtual face of your brand and the place where potential customers go to learn more about your products and services. However, creating a website can be a daunting task, and it’s essential to consider several factors before getting started. Here are seven things to keep in mind before making a website for your business.

1. Determine your goals:

Before you start creating a website, you need to determine what you want to achieve with it. Do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or sell products online? Knowing your goals will help you create a website that meets your specific needs.

2. Know your target audience:

It’s crucial to understand your target audience to create a website that resonates with them. Consider their age, gender, interests, and online behavior to create a website that speaks directly to them.

3. Choose the right platform:

There are many website platforms available, including WordPress, Wix, and Shopify. Choose a platform that aligns with your goals, budget, and technical expertise.

4. Create a user-friendly design:

Your website should be easy to navigate, with a clear structure and user-friendly interface. Consider the user experience when designing your website and ensure that it’s visually appealing and easy to use.

5. Optimize for search engines:

SEO is essential to ensure that your website appears in search engine results. Research keywords relevant to your business and incorporate them into your website’s content.

6. Develop engaging content:

Your website’s content should be engaging and informative, providing value to your visitors. Use clear and concise language and include visuals to make your content more engaging.

7. Ensure mobile compatibility:

More and more people are using their mobile devices to browse the web. Ensure that your website is mobile-friendly, with a responsive design that adapts to different screen sizes.

In conclusion, creating a website for your business can be a game-changer, but it’s important to consider several factors before getting started. Determine your goals, know your audience, choose the right platform, create a user-friendly design, optimize for search engines, develop engaging content, and ensure mobile compatibility to create a website that meets your business’s needs.

Read More Articles

In an economy that is steadily depending on digital capabilities to survive, it is critical for any business to have its own online presence. E-commerce is rapidly becoming the norm for most businesses– from food to fast-moving consumer goods, fashion, groceries, appliances, services, and even real estate.

Currently, there are plenty of sites offering this critical business platform. Of all of them, the two most popular ones are WordPress and Shopify, and there is often the debate on which is better.

To begin, let us identify the two to better understand which one is which. Wikipedia defines Shopify as a proprietary e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems, while WordPress is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in PHP and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database.

Flexibility

WordPress, being an open-source platform, it is significantly more customizable than Shopify with plenty of features to satisfy even the most meticulous users. WordPress allows users to be more flexible with the website features and design through themes and custom plugins that other developers usually provide for free. Buying and using themes like Divi or Elementor further allows you to easily personalize every corner of your website.

Shopify also offers free and paid templates, although changing something as vital as your theme will also require you to make the corresponding reformatting of your content to follow the template’s structure. Should you need to add out-of-the-box functionality, you can still do so by checking the Shopify App Store for free or mostly paid addons.

Ease of Use

WordPress was originally made for blogging. It has evolved due to the demand because of the basic technical knowledge required. There are also plenty of online resources that users may tap to learn the platform on their own. It may be confusing at first but if you invest a couple of hours on tutorials, it’ll be like learning how to navigate on a newly released mobile device. 

Similarly, you also require learning time to use Shopify. This platform is really made for e-commerce and functions as SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) by its core. Its structure is designed to focus on adding products and selling them through the website which already included in the plan. If your focus is on selling and not designing your website, meaning you would just follow the free template provided and not do customization, you can easily set up your Shopify site in no time.

Ownership & Expansion

Using an open-source WordPress platform means you would need to have your own hosting service. This means you will have to pay for it separately, although this approach allows you to have full control over your web storage account. As a result, you can have multiple websites, host your own email, and all other things depending on the hosting plan you availed.

Unfortunately with Shopify, you can neither add more sites nor host email accounts with your domain name for personal use. But you can still use the Shopify Email addon for campaign ads and email marketing which is free until October 2020, after which you get 2,500 emails free each month and only pay USD 1 for every 1,000 emails you send after that. If you would need to use email for your team or customer engagement, you would need to get third-party email hosting services (G-Suite, Office365, Zoho Mail, etc) separately.

Shopify being a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) in nature means that you don’t have full ownership of the platform. You would need to consider your long term plans for your business as this is one of the deciding factors. There are many platforms and websites back in the days that have long closed out taking their customers along with them. One good example is the shutdown of Multiply Marketplace in May 2013, which could also happen to other e-commerce or social media websites. If you have your website on WordPress, full control means you can always back up your full site, email, and database then download it on your personal storage for safekeeping. And since its open-source, you can easily move it to another hosting service provider using the same platform.

Cost & Transaction Fees

While WordPress doesn’t have its own tool or dashboard for e-commerce, most third-party e-commerce plug-ins are compatible and easy to integrate. For payment, you can use PayPal which charges around 4% transaction fee. Shopify, on the other hand, does not charge transaction fees if you use their Shopify Payment Gateway. Sadly, this is still not yet available in the Philippines as of this writing, therefore, Shopify will charge around 2.9% on top of your Paypal transaction fees for every successful sale. Do take note that there will be no charges if you set your payments to Cash-on-Delivery or manual bank transfers for both platforms. Although some banks in the country will charge a small fee for inter-bank transfers.

The Basic Shopify Account starts at USD 29 (PHP 1,465) per month which allows you to have up to 2 staff accounts to manage the store and website. While for WordPress, you can add many admin accounts at no cost. This is an advantage if you have a team that collaborates to do inventory, blog content writing, web design and etc.

For the hosting of WordPress, you can technically host your own site with a DIY server but its rather much more cost-efficient to subscribe to a cloud hosting plan nowadays. The price range would vary per service provider, however, with our DatastiQ Starter Plan for example, the price only starts at PHP 850 per month which includes free DIVI theme, free web design, and webmaster service. For a small one time charge, you can upgrade to get the e-Commerce add-on to have our team set up WooCommerce plug-in for you.

We are doing this to assist our local Filipino entrepreneurs creating their first digital footprint which in turn will help increase internet maturity in our country.

Unless you would know how to set up and build your Shopify website, you might somehow need to hire a Shopify web designer if you got stuck somewhere. This is usually on per hour basis which might cost you more on top of the other things that you are already paying for.

For the website name, both platforms would require domain name registration with the price varying depending on the TLD (Top Level Domain) you would choose (.com, .net, .ph, etc). If you want to know more about domain names, you can check out our Digital Uptraining video for an easy explanation.

Conclusion

DatastiQ recognizes that in e-commerce, user experience is critical and it all depends on how the website is designed. Even with superior products, a clunky and unfriendly user interface would invariably ruin sales. The objective is to create a smooth, painless transition from browsing to selection to payment.

If you can set up your shop website on your own and then focus on the selling part immediately without going for additional features or add-ons, like email hosting to interact and reply to your customers, then Shopify is more recommended for you. It’s a little bit expensive but it offers smooth templates, good inventory, email marketing, and sales reporting.

However, if this is your first time to go beyond the digital realm and you need someone to guide you, having your own web hosting and developer using WordPress would be ideal for your business especially if you plan to go further on the design, features, savings, ownership, and interoperability. With WordPress’ powerful customizability, the user experience is bound to be a pleasant one.

We believe that both platforms are like apples and oranges, both are designed to cater to the need of present businesses and online sellers. Each has unique features and in the end, it all boils down to your preferred taste. If ever you need a team to assist you on either Shopify or WordPress, you can always contact us for consultation, because together we will grow your business.

Read More Articles

Coronavirus disease 2019 or more commonly known as COVID-19 has been affecting all businesses globally and if you own or run a business, we believe you are somehow affected in one way or another.

In order to continue profit, you must make your operations resilient in times of crisis. Amidst the chaos and panic, we understand that business must go on, hence we have listed down some things to consider which might help you and your company in these times.

Educate Yourself and Your Team

First on the list to ensure you are on top of the situation. It is critical to understand and know what you are facing, as of this writing its COVID-19. Understand how this flu-like virus behaves, transfer and how it can be avoided. Ensure that you discuss and educate this with your staff and team. The more you equip yourselves with information, the more prepare your company could become. 

One quick tip, if you don’t want to read the medical journals and long research studies, you can always look for Frequently Ask Questions (FAQs) to save you some reading time. Start now and check out the World Health Organization’s Q&A for Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19).

Review Your Operational Structure

Once you know how COVID-19 works, begin to review your operational structure. Determine which are the core and critical staff from the support staff. Identify which functions and projects that can be pushed at the back burner. Review your deliverables and schedules to make sure you are ready in case your operation begins to flow roughly.

Things could get messy during a crisis scenario but knowing your chess pieces and how it works makes planning really easy and effective. Learn which team or staff can be moved and can provide support remotely. If they continue their normal operations while not in the office, then you are set to go.

Assess & Address Social-Emotional Concerns

There is a lot of information out there, sometimes it’s useful while most are not. And the last thing you want to happen is for your people to start panicking. Once your team starts to panic, it disables them to operate and think like in the regular days. The concerns grow in the middle of chaos, which is not addressed properly, could become an expensive liability.

To avoid this, you must practice good leadership and ensure to communicate with your staff, your team and everyone else within your company. Do not show that you are also afraid and lost during this pandemic incident, but instead, take this a chance to connect and inspire your team. Check for their and their family’s well being, and provide assurance that the business is here to provide support to the best it can. If you have followed our first step, you should then be alright.

Plan & Execute Your Resiliency Strategy

Always remember, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. While you are still not affected and are not under disaster recovery mode, take this opportunity to plan your resiliency strategy. Take the following fundamentals to make your very first resiliency plan:

1. Identify your plan owner and participants.
2. List down all possible incidents that could impact you and your business.
3. For each incident, identify your approach and strategy on how to recover.
4. Map your people and their recovery strategy. (ie. Work from home or Relocate to another site)
5. Test or execute your plan.

There are no hard rules on the format and style as long as you know the fundamentals. However, keep in mind that there is also an in-depth standard for Crisis Management, Business Resiliency, and Disaster Recovery, although, for now, you can start with the above method.

Upgrade Your Situational Awareness

Having a plan and knowing about the virus is not enough, ensure that you also know the growing numbers. Know the case numbers for suspected, confirmed and cleared gives you a better overview of what’s happening out there. You use the math skills you have learned during school days to analyze ratios, probabilities, and projections which could help you make proper operational decisions.

You can check out the Philippines’ Department of Health COVID-19 Informational Page to know if the numbers on your location or your clients’ area. You can also check Sandra Tabinas’ Tableau Dashboard for COVID-19 Cases in Metro Manila which is also DOH data-driven. If you are looking for much more data on a global scale, you can check out the ESRI ArcGIS OpsDashboard for COVID-19 made and maintained by Johns Hopkins University (JHU), which one of the first to track this case since it started last December 2019.

Inform Your Vendors & Stakeholders

You have now made significant actions for your business and your team, but it doesn’t end there. It is also important to determine if you need to notify your vendors, clients, and stakeholders. Every decision you are about to make, whether you will close or operate in shorter office hours, you need to update your customers. Business is a relationship, and every relationship requires communication. If you are in a regulated industry, you are required to report some activities if you invoke your resiliency plans. Every great business has a great communication strategy whether it’s for marketing, sales promotions or even for this case, during a crisis.

Be Flexible & Prepare for Lessons Learned

The above steps are already solid and will help your business become more resilient, unfortunately, anything could happen during a crisis, therefore you must keep a flexible mindset. Always be ready and adapt to the changes as things could suddenly turn left. And of course, the same with your plan. It could also not go smoothly but always remember to list down your difficulties and take it as part of Lessons Learned for review once all the dust has settled.

It could be difficult sometimes, however, just imagine that every incident is like a journey, you may experience it again but never the same. At least when you are about to embark on a new one, you would know what to do next and will probably discover the opportunities that come along with it.

Read More Articles

Read More Articles

Read More Articles

Read More Articles

Read More Articles

Read More Articles

Read More Articles